1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to apparatus for removing the skins from edible nuts and more particularly is directed towards a nut blanching apparatus of improved adjustability for quicker, more convenient and more accurate setting according to the size, grade, type and condition of the nuts being blanched.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In a great many food products utilizing nuts as an ingredient, blanched nuts are usually preferred. A blanched nut is one in which shelled nuts have their hard, dark outer skins removed. The nuts may be blanched by various techniques and apparatus which include water blanching, as disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,558,899 and 2,964,080, or the process may be dry as disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,702,574 and 3,196,914. In the latter two patents, the nut skins are first slit as by means of cutters such as shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,217,764. These cutters form a thin, longitudinal slit along the opposite sides of the nuts to facilitate the subsequent blanching across a moving belt. In practice, the amount of blanching action required to fully remove the nut skins without splitting the nuts will vary from one type of nut to another and will also vary with respect to the size of the nuts and other factors. Excess abrasive action will result in a higher percentage of splits while insufficient abrasive action will produce incomplete blanching. Thus, the blanching apparatus should be adjustable to vary the parameters of the blanching action.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide improvements in the adjustment of the blanching mechanism over the apparatus of the sort shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,196,914. Another object of this invention is to provide a high speed nut blanching apparatus adapted to remove all of the outer skins of nuts with a minimum number of splits. A further object of this invention is to provide a high speed nut blanching apparatus having a wide range of convenient adjustments to accommodate nuts in the wide range of sizes, grades, types and condition.